COFCO

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. For example, it enforces land conversion cut-off dates defined by national legislation for its Brazil and Amazon soy suppliers. In the Cerrado and Gran Chaco regions, it collaborates with soy value chain partners and other stakeholders to achieve deforestation and conversion-free production. The company also mandates suppliers to commit to conserving biodiversity and respecting HCV areas, HCS forests, and protected areas.

Water withdrawal
The company demonstrates a reduction in water withdrawal at its subsidiary, COFCO. In 2021, water withdrawal decreased by over 20% compared to 2020 values, due to process improvements and a significant decline in sugar production

No leading practices were identified in the nutrition area.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company demonstrates how it purchases soybean from local cooperatives in Brazil through its Social Fuel Stamp programme. Additionally, it shares its approach to building long lasting relationships with Brazilian grains and oilseed suppliers.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. If further discloses the gender of its board of directors and management.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its sustainability governance and accountability by designating an individual or body to implement its sustainability strategy and by assigning decision-making and oversight to its highest governance body. It could link senior executives’ compensation to sustainability targets and objectives. Additionally, it could disclose if the highest governance body has expertise in its most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any potential misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts, as well as the outcome of this process in relation to its sustainability strategy at group level. Furthermore, it could disclose group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company could set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions and report on progress. Aligning these targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory is also an option. Additionally, it could disclose reductions in scope 1 and 2 emissions at the parent level. The company may work on reducing its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by setting time-bound targets and reporting progress. Aligning scope 3 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory is possible.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company has set an explicit target for a deforestation and conversion-free soy supply chain by 2030 in Latin America’s sensitive regions, it has an opportunity to provide clear actions, resources, or KPIs in their plan to achieve this target.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilizers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report progress against the targets.

Food loss and waste
The company has the opportunity to disclose its FLW reduction targets and report progress against these goals. Additionally, they can align their FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
While the company discloses that it enhances soil fertility, it could provide further details about the actions performed towards this goal. It also has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices, and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company has the opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for reducing water withdrawal in its own operations and then report progress against this target. Additionally, the company can report the amount of water withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Furthermore, there is an opportunity for the company to engage with suppliers in order to reduce water withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate how it is improving the nutritional quality of its products, and to set targets to increase the share of more nutritious products in its portfolio.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it provides nutritional information on its products and how it supports consumers with making healthy food choices through its labelling schemes.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to food safety and demonstrate that its operations and supply chain adhere to food safety standards.

Workforce nutrition
The company has an opportunity to disclose evidence of workforce nutrition programmes.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations. While the subsidiary COFCO International includes child labour requirements for its suppliers, the company could disclose a prohibition of child labour and an age-verification system for its suppliers at the parental level.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The subsidiary COFCO International does not accept or tolerate any form of forced or involuntary labour in its operations. However, the company could prohibit payment of recruitment fees, retention of workers’ personal documents or restriction of workers’ freedom of movement at the group level for its operations and supply chain. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to recognise and assess the health and safety risks to vulnerable groups, such as migrant and temporary labourers, women and young farmers. Furthermore, it could provide evidence of support activities that improve the health and safety of vulnerable groups.

Land rights
The company lacks disclosure at the parental level on land rights. Also, it does not require its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in contracts with business relationships. It could also describe its process for identifying bribery and corruption, and indicate the existence of a grievance mechanism through which stakeholders can file related complaints.

Further, the company could disclose how it approaches lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document, specify that it does not make any political contributions, and divulge how much it spends on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy commitment to worker health and safety across its operations and supply chain, and detail supplier compliance monitoring. The company could set a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or declare the achievement of this goal. The company could also explain its method for determining a living wage in each region and how it supports suppliers in paying a living wage.

Additionally, beyond diversity, the company could specifically pledge to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Disclosing time-bound goals and the women-to-men salary ratio would further enhance transparency.

Respect human rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement committing to respecting human rights and the ILO fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain. While the company has identified some human rights risks and impacts internally, it can elaborate on its risk identification process for both its operations and supply chain. It could further explain how it assesses and identifies its salient human rights issues. Moreover, despite its public statement on compliance with human rights laws and conventions, it could also reveal a global system to prevent, mitigate or remediate its salient human rights issues.